Day 2, Part 2, The Ten Commandments

by celtaconfessions

Arguably, the best part of the CELTA course is the feedback sessions. Especially in the beginning, observation of the other trainees was a great learning tool; you learn a lot by watching – both the good and the bad. A large part of my modus operandi is based on what I didn’t like about my Spanish classes when I was learning all those years ago. During this CELTA course, we all tried to improve on the weaker things we saw, and perhaps copied what we thought might work well for ourselves and our students.

During these sessions, we’d analyse each other’s good and bad moments, always starting with a personal assessment, and the tutor then gave his or her two pennies’ worth.

We were generally very respectful towards each other – one had to maintain a balance of being careful not to dampen a fellow trainee’s motivational level while, at the same time, not to be over-patronising.

Did they maintain an appropriate position in the classroom? Too far/too close? Did they have their backs to the students?

Did they obstruct the whiteboard?

Did they maintain eye contact with the students?

Basic teaching skills

Did the teacher nominate effectively?

Were the instructions clear?

As I mentioned in the previous post, my fellow trainees were a great bunch. Even the trainer, Ian, said so in the feedback. In that post, I’d reviewed – to a fashion – the performance of the others, albeit somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there wasn’t anyone to review mine although I sort of did a personal evaluation.

I was really chuffed that day when Ingmar, bless his heart, said I was “really professional” and “reminded him of a lot of the teachers he’d had” (or did he say “reminded him a lot of the teachers…”?). I hope they were good teachers, Ingmar! Freya (an incredibly efficient observer and note-taker, I’ll have to say) added, “controlled but not too formal”. Wow! Thanks Freya!

I don’t know about the others, but, on the whole, I valued the trainees’ feedback very highly. We learned a lot, too, from the trainers’ observation and their ideas and suggestions; I wouldn’t take that away from Ian.

Copyright 2012 Chiew Pang (Where’s Chris? Still at the café?)

After the peer feedback session, Ian gave us a rundown on giving instructions. Now, I might have mentioned before, CELTA (now, when I say CELTA, I refer to Seville’s IH CLIC and it could be different elsewhere) is BIG on giving instructions. To be honest, I’d probably forgotten about this session quite quickly, having had so much to absorb on the first few days, and am only recalling them now. Did I say rundown? Rather than a rundown, it was more like the ten commandments. So, future trainees, this is thy tablet!

Thou shalt get the attention of thy pupils (without rapping their knuckles) before commencing.

Thou shalt call them by their names.

Thou shalt tell thy pupils what to do clearly and concisely. Thou shalt not be wordy!

Thou shalt master the art of chesting, and know’st thy chicken from thy egg (in new English, which to come first – the handout or the instructions).

Thou must also tell thy pupils what NOT to do (e.g to fill in the gaps).

Thou shalt do an example with thy whole class (Let’s do the first one together!). If this shouldst not be possible, or even if it were, then thou shalt swear by the ICQs and nothing but the ICQs.

Thou shalt give thy pupils a limit of time and be clear if they have to work in pairs, groups, or individually.

Thou shalt write thine instructions (as a back-up) on thine handouts.

Thou shalt never forget to monitor. Are they doing the activity correctly?

Should the instructions be too complicated, thou shalt give a demonstration (e.g. in playing a board game).

After Moses laid the tablet down, we were handed our feedback (evaluation) sheet, then we moved on to preparation for the next days’ TP. Since these lessons were of a 40-minute duration, 3 of us would teach the next day, and the other 3, the following. I was to be the very last again.

More of that later. For now, let us take a look at the feedback sheet.

As it was an observation of a 20-minute class, the assessment check list was brief:

Planning

logical and organised planning

presenting materials with professional appearance and regard to copyright requirements

Classroom Teaching Skills

establishing rapport and developing motivation

adjusting own language to meet level and needs of learners

giving clear instructions

providing accurate, natural and appropriate examples of spoken and written language

Awareness of Teaching and Learning Process

teaching a group with sensitivity to the needs, interests and background of the group

organising the classroom to suit the learners/activity

setting up and managing individual, pair, group and whole class work

Professional Development

co-operation with colleagues

attendance and punctuality

Eleven items to observe and evaluate in twenty minutes. That’s OK. What I’m interested in knowing, however, is how they actually grade these. As far as I know, there are three grades N (not up to standard), S (to standard) and S+ (above standard). How badly does one have to do to get an N? And what constitutes an S+?

I’m not sure what the others got, but I received 11 S’s. Fair? I don’t know. How would I evaluate myself? I’d give everyone of us S+ for both items on PD; well, except for Chris, who arrived late. The rest, we co-operated, we were early. So?

I’d also give myself an S+ for rapport, definitely. Then there were the 3 items on awareness. I’d give myself S+’s too. I hardly knew these students, but, hell, for the time I knew them, yes, sure I was sensitive to their needs and interests. They weren’t entirely sure of the differences of have and have got when they got to my lesson, so I explained to them, using the WB well, according to the official feedback. Or wasn’t this in conformity with what was expected because it wasn’t in my aim and my aim was to give controlled practice? Codswallop, I’d say, if that was the case.

Organising the classroom? It was a small room. And it was fine the way it had been arranged. So?

Setting up work? I thought I did what I was supposed to do. Or perhaps not. I think I might have goofed at the end when I apparently told them to write and speak when it should have been one or the other. I don’t remember exactly.

At that time I didn’t mind. It was the first TP and I was just happy I got over it without any catastrophe. Later, however, it would become a different story…

In retrospect – or perhaps I’m just being paranoid with this chip on my shoulder – I may have earned two black marks on Ian’s book on this very second day.

The first was when Ingmar remarked that he had a plan but he didn’t exactly follow it, to which I half-jokingly added, “The best lesson plan is the the one that ends up in the bin”, then “Isn’t that true, Ian?” He kind of looked at me, thinking, “Mmm, where’s this guy going?” To understand my remark, you’ll have to understand many things beyond CELTA; you’ll have to understand me, and my philosophies, you’ll have to know different lesson approaches other than those presented by CELTA, rapport, dynamics, and so on.

I don’t think I was understood after four weeks, let alone after two days.

It wouldn’t have been the first time my warped sense of humour got me into deepish waters.

The second instance was when we, the trainees, were discussing speed of speech, and I gave my opinion, “I’m sure Ian will disagree, but I think we shouldn’t slow down too much because the students get used to this and then have difficulty understanding real-life situations when people speak normally.” I still stand by it. OK, sure, I tried to adapt to what the trainers wanted, but it was obvious to the sensitive ones around me that, from day one, we had had our differences.

And I repeat. I stand by it. For crying out loud, why are they so against repeating? Don’t we repeat, or ask others to repeat, in REAL situations? Even Cambridge examiners have said, “If you don’t understand the examiners, it’s quite all right to ask them to repeat the question.” But, what’s more important is this. Look at this sentence:

/ ɪts kwaɪt ɔːl raɪt tə ɑːsk ˈpiːpl̩ tə rɪˈpiːt /

That’s when we speak normally. But we when we slow down, we tend to emphasise all the words and the /tə/ becomes the standard /tu/. And as you are probably aware, in normal speech, almost all unstressed vowels take on the schwa sound and this is the reason learners have problems understanding us! So what should it be? Slow down? More than slow down, I’d say what is more important is to speak CLEARLY.

In all honesty, when I asked the students they all told me they understood me, Speedy Gonzalez or not…

What do you think? Do you agree with me or do you think I’m completely and utterly wrong?

[…] In the feedback session, and this hurt, he himself said it that others had done the same (but surprise, surprise, he hadn’t mentioned it in any of the feedbacks before, and after all the bad things he’d said, he chose to tell me, in my session, adding salt to the wound: AVOID using “Do you understand?” Avoid asking “What are you going to do?” (For more maxims, read The Ten Commandments) […]

#3″Thou shalt tell thy pupils what to do clearly and concisely. Thou shalt not be wordy!”
haha sooooo true! I got in trouble for that ALLLLL the time. And speaking too quickly. And using colloquialisms. As for the what do you need to do to get a N? I routinely got N’s on the copyright portion because I would nearly always forget to to cite where I got the worksheet from, or where I found the pics, etc. I would remember pretty much every other lesson plan that I did! haha.

Haha, Meghan. I can just imagine! So you got Ns on copyright? Well, I do mine to perfection, all typed neatly and beautiful, but no S+. And when all material is my own (which is a lot of the time) how do they grade it? Why not an S+? The message otherwise is, no, thou shalt not use thy own material, thou shalt use a publisher’s and state kindly so because thou must support the publishers.